Blockchain Disruption in Fishery Industry

The seafood industry is one of the world’s largest and oldest market sectors. As the industry is made up of complex global supply chains, it is subjected to suffer from social and environmental challenges. Traceability and transparency along these supply chains are the major concerns that can be fulfilled by the potential value of blockchain technology. “Blockchain” is for many people still little more than a buzzword they may have heard about in connection with the digital currency bitcoins. But in fact, blockchain and artificial intelligence are developing into leading technologies that are “revolutionizing” many areas of the economy. Blockchains provide transparency, enable more control, and simplify traceability in business relationships.

According to the conservation group WWF, blockchain technology is the solution to such opacity, a tamper-proof digital ledger that can guarantee provenance by verifying the accuracy of every step from boat to supermarket shelf.

 

The aim is to help stop illegal, unreported, unregulated  fishing and human rights abuses in the tuna industry. These have included  reports of corruption, illegal trafficking and human slavery on tuna fishing boats. It is hoped the use of blockchain technology will strengthen transparency and enable full traceability, thereby countering significant threats to licensing revenue and crew working conditions, safety, and broader impact to the environment.

Process

• With Blockchain Technology, one has to register their catch on the blockchain network by entering the necessary details like type of species, time, location and even the weight of the fish and also the gear one is using.
• After the data is entered, it follows the fish throughout the supply chain. With the integration of the concept of IoT, Blockchain can connect data from each trawler to respective their processors. It enables real-time monitoring of the seafood as it moves along with the supply chain.
• When fishers catch the fish, they can attach a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag with a unique ID number.
• When fish moves towards the processor, the tag gives out real-time information regarding its location, condition, and number of people during its journey. In this way, Blockchain can track every movement of seafood.
• And then finally, when it reaches the store, the entire journey can be traced by scanning a code on the package.

Sensors & Fish

Some sensors will even monitor the products temperature, humidity and other factors. So, when a consumer purchases the fish off the self of a supermarket, or when a restaurant receives an order of fish, they can check the journey of that exact fish online using a tracking ID or a QR code. They can see every factory the fish went through, when the fish was transported. A sushi restaurant in San Diego called Harney Sushi is already printing edible QR codes on their rice paper wafers. These QR codes direct people to the Fish Watch website of NOAA, where visitors can learn more about the sustainability and the origin of the fish they are eating.

Thus Blockchain provides opportunities in the seafood industry that lead to the improvement in operating efficiency across the supply chain. It also equips the end consumers with trustworthy product information with increased data sharing and interoperability among each other. The implemented smart contract enables the value chain of fish and its derivatives to become more transparent, and thus the value chain can improve its reputation and gain credibility and improve consumer confidence.

The platform has another advantages like improve communication and the coordination between the involved parties and improve the integrated process. It also allows to control the quantity and the species of wild fish that are caught and the places and the season in which certain species can be caught, helping to preserve marine diversity in the oceans.

Conclusion

When it comes to governance and management level, stakeholders are connected on a distributed ledger, which will increase the traceability and transparency of the industry where products can be easily tracked and traced, and activities are carried out by the form of agreement. On a consumer level, it enables consumers to have better sustainable seafood products by accessing a wide range of relevant information like the location of catch, sustainability indicators, and others, thus offering a powerful tool to make a well-informed choice and select organizations that embrace sustainability challenges.

There is a major opportunity in digitalizing production steps and gaining overview of data, which pretend to the full supply chain in order to proof product integrity to the customer. Blockchain, data mining, and AI will not stop IUU fishing, will not prevent overfishing and discarding. But they may help to make global stream of fish and seafood products with the associated flow of money becoming more visible and transparent.

 References

1. Cruz, E., & Miguel Rosado Cruz, A. (2019). A Food Value Chain Integrated Business Process and Domain Models for Product Traceability and Quality Monitoring: Pattern Models for Food Traceability Platforms. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems. Published. https://doi.org/10.5220/0007730502850294
2. Yan, B., Shi, P., and Huang, G. (2013). Development of traceability system of aquatic foods supply chain based on rfid and epc internet of things. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, 29(12), 172–183.
3. ​Blaha, F. & Katafono, K. 2020. Blockchain application in seafood value chains. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Circular No. 1207. Rome, FAO.
4. Schwertner, K. (2017). Digital transformation of business. Trakia Journal of Science, 15(Suppl.1), 388–393. https://doi.org/10.15547/tjs.2017.s.01.065
5. Mehta, A. (2020, September 1). Using blockchain to bring transparency from sea to plate. Reuters Events | Sustainable Business. https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/using-blockchain-bring-transparency-sea-plate
6. Blockchain Tuna Project. (n.d.). WWF New Zealand. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from https://www.wwf.org.nz/what_we_do/marine/blockchain_tuna_project/